Wheel of Fate
by Ferrum
Summary: [Post Gensui III] Apple struggles with her fate. Shu was there to help her realize. How would she act? [Shu x Apple]


**運命の歯車**/The Wheel of Fate  
**Disclaimer:** Konami  
**Pairings:** Shu x Apple  
**Timeline**: After the end of Suikoden III... and I seriously need a beta reader...

The sixth theme for 108 Genso Suikoden themes. This was made three years ago (October 28th 2003), I just found it when I was putting tags in my LJ entries.Read, fixed, and decided to post it here.Cross-posted(three yearsbefore) in my LJand my homepage.

xxxx

**運命の歯車** / _Wheel of Fate_

It was autumn in Iksay Village. Red, brown, yellow leaves covered pathways surrounded by trees in similar colors. From afar, she could hear people talking with each other. Her ears also caught children's laughter and female's chatter.  
It was autumn in Iksay Village, and the whole of it were in a celebration. For a successful harvest, for a wonderful season, for a beautiful life.  
Men's basses, women and children's sopranos. Of course there were also baritones and altos. They were an orchestra who were performing an alluring suite in her ears... A nice symphony.  
She would do anything to participate in that orchestra.

But there she was, in some pathway. Far away from the village's square, where warmth embracing people's bodies and smiles kissing their lips. She could feel the wind sending some of the warmth and the smiles to her back.  
She longed to feel those warmth completely.

... and she was there, walking through autumn colored pathways. In front of her was the perfect circle of light, ready to hide himself behind the horizon. Sending rays of life to the fields of gold.  
It was beautiful... and she had completely forgotten that she had wanted to be one amongst the crowds, just few moments ago. She was now in her own world...

Then she remembered, she was always inside her own world. It was so comfortable. Even the warmth of the outside world couldn't seduce her to get out from her private shelter.

_"Until when you want to be stuck with a dead person there?"_

It was comfortable... yet she was bored with it. Sometimes when she peeked through the window of her own little world, she could see lot of things she missed. But instead of going outside, she stayed inside, bounded with the chains of tasks.  
Maybe there were times when people, her friends, tried to loose the chain, but the chain just fastened more.

_"Mathiu wasn't always right!"_

It had been years and nothing had changed.  
She had finished her first task, she had broke through her chains. But now, there was a new chain, a new task... she must do it. Or else, who would?

She took a deep breath and let it go... and smiled.  
She was comfortable in her chains... in a world where only her and her ideas exist...  
... and how she liked autumn evening in Iksay Village.

"Fancy to meet you here, Apple," A voice, pulling her from her reverie. A voice she knew well... a voice she hadn't heard for years...

Apple whipped her head around expecting to see the person in her mind. The person she didn't want to meet again, at the same time... the person she missed so much...  
Raven hair, demanding chestnut eyes, a man in his forties. She hadn't seen the man she had in her mind for years, but she had been with him long enough at the past, to know that it was really _him_.

"Shu?" but there's a doubt in her own voice.

"Do I look that old so you can't recognize me?" the man took few steps closer towards the woman.

"Not that, what are you doing **_here_**?"

"What else beside taking a good view of the well known Iksay Village of Zexen?"

"The head chancellor of Dunan Republic, one of the busiest and most important person in the continent, without guards?" Apple pinpointed.

"I'm not sure about the last one."

"Oh," Apple commented while eyes traveling searching for the person Shu was talking about.

"I don't think he would fancy you searching for his whereabouts, dear Apple," Shu said.

"Why you are here?" Apple asked again.

Shu didn't answer for a while. His eyes telling that he was half irritated and half amused. "On a meeting with Zexen Council, then I heard about the ruckus our old friend made. I went to Budehuc Castle for a while, and soon understood the whole thing. The Castle Master, Thomas, suggested me to go visit here on my way home to Dunan," Shu paused, "and now I'm here."

"I..." Apple whispered, "...see..."

"I take it you're finished with the interrogation, miss strategist?" He smiled at the red color on Apple's cheeks, "you're sure stuck with the same thing all over again, aren't you? From the Toran Liberation War, Dunan Unification War, and now this."

"I can't help it. I'm stuck within _Wheel of Fate_."

"Or you don't want to let yourself go from it."

Apple stayed silent.

"Did I hit the right spot?" Shu asked rhetorically, and Apple kept herself silent. "So, you really haven't changed... I thought you, at least, were over with it when you're married."

Yes, it was the last time she had seen him, few weeks before her marriage. When she and her past husband delivered the marriage invitation to him directly... and she couldn't forget the smirk her past husband made when he told Shu the _happy_ news.

"Is he here right now?"

"I'm already divorced."

Shu didn't make any reply. Apple looked away, refusing to see Shu's eyes. She already knew what they would try to tell her... she didn't need to meet with Shu's gaze to know what he was thinking about.

"You're not sad," Shu said.

"You can say so, he was not a great partner to begin with."

"Oh." She didn't like the _'oh'_, but Shu didn't speak anything after that. Apple turned her head towards his senior in the school back then. "You're not asking why?"

Shu sighed. He only asked back, "what for? It's not like I don't know what kind of person he was, or still is," he then smiled, "and that is why our little Apple is being trapped back in her own naive mind."

Her eyebrows met, "I'm already 33."

"An old lady."

"And a shabby bachelor."

Shu chuckled, "what an irony."

Apple was tongue-tied. _Yes, what an irony._  
Her life... His life...  
Played by the True Runes who controlled the sparks of change, revolution, and war. They were shaped as stars to participate in the drama of love, hate and justice... a soap opera.

"So you heard everything from Budehuc?" Apple opened the conversation again. No answer from the former tactician of Jowston Alliance in Dunan Unification War, and Apple continued. "Luc tried to kill destiny, fate... and god, we tried to stop him."

"And you succeed."

"It's not just the True Rune wielders," Apple announced. "Not just Young Master McDohl, Genkaku's son, Jowy Blight, or Flame Champion. In the end we all are still controlled by destiny. We're still bound in the _wheel of fate_."

_Yes_, Apple repeated in her mind. We're only pawns. All that we can do now is do what we must do with our best efforts. She was aware of that.  
The True Rune wielders had a task to wield the Rune.  
Her task was not as great as theirs, but she only did what she could do as a student of Mathiu Silverberg... to continue the legacy of the Silverbergs.

Silence.

"Luc was a fool." A sigh from Shu. "But you are as fool, or much more an idiot than he was."

Apple turned her head to Shu, confused, but more insulted. "What you're talking about? You supposed to know what I was talking about!"

"Then you should stop reading about meaningless history and stop writing about unimportant past," Shu fought back with his always calmed voice, but the tone of anger couldn't be avoided by Apple's ears. "The _Wheel of Fate_is a vocabulary you can only find in fortune teller's terminology! You're the only one who's stuck in that _wheel of fate_, my little Apple!"

"You're calling me with that name again."

"For me, you're more like a child," he stated. "I bet the biography of our beloved master you're writing now is filled with unnecessary words. You're up side down, dearest Apple. You look at simple things as difficult, and think complicated things as simple thing.

"Mathiu was a great strategist, you don't need to write his biography like a romance novel. While life," Shu took a deep breath, "was not a simple thing. Fate doesn't just control our lives like human breathe. No, Apple. It was McDohl who decided to take Soul Eater Rune. It was Jowy Blight who decided to betray Genkaku's son. It was our leader in Dunan Alliance who decided to not take the throne and went for a journey with his friends...

_She would do anything to join that orchestra..._

"It was you who decided to join the three big wars in this continent's history. It is you who kneeled in front of me, begging me to join Dunan Army. It was you who decided to write Mathiu's biography. It was you who determined to serve the Silverberg legacy.

_She would do anything to go outside, and feel the warmth..._

"It was you... who decided to marry Sheena. It was you who decided to divorce with him."

"You said yourself, that you know what kind of man he was, and it was not strange if I divorced him!"

"Did fate ask you to do that?"

_She was trapped in the chains she made herself. The chains of her own egoistic mind._

"You're no different from Luc. Your words, your _Wheel of Fortune_ are insulting those who had tried to fight for their lives. You're unjust for the soldiers who're trying to stay alive in the battle, for the Iksay villagers who take a long time to grow their corps... to finally celebrate their harvest."

_She had been comfortable in her chains... because she had thought that fate set her chains just for her... destiny had prepared the tasks that could be finished, only by her..._

"You're insulting me, who waited for fifteen years."

_Sometimes when she peeked through the window of her own little world, she could see lot of things she missed._  
_She would do anything to join the celebration, to be just another face in the crowds._

"You're insulting me, who decided to leave Dunan Castle, asking every people I met for the vice-strategist of Zexen-Grassland Alliance army whereabouts."

Her eyes widened.

_... and it was her to decide to stay in her own world._

The world was up side down for her, all she had to do was decide.

_The only thing she had to do to join the orchestra, to feel the warm, to be another normal person... was to step outside her world._  
It was a simple thing...

... Yes, it was a very simple thing.

She took a step forward. Was another her in her little world also taking a step forward? "What are you talking about?"

Shu shook his head, tired. "I think it is also you who decide to make this more difficult."

Apple only smiled.

_In the end, there was no Wheel of Fate..._

It was autumn evening in Iksay Village. The Village was in celebration, and the world was simply beautiful.

xxxx

Caesar scratched his head. He was trying to find Apple when he saw her... there, with another man, who he knew very well. Shu, the advisor of Dunan Republic. One of his grandfather's best student.  
And the main reason why he knew him very well because... Apple just couldn't stop talking about the man, and always comparing him with Caesar.

Well, it was time for Apple to greet her second spring.


End file.
